3 Cold-Weather Experiments To Keep You Entertained During The Polar Vortex

A man
and his dog contend with blowing snow in Brooklyn following a
snow storm that left up to 8 inches of snow on January 3, 2014 in
New York, United States.Spencer
Platt /Getty

It's cold.

For much of North America, temperatures have gone from the mild
discomfort of a normal winter to something more biblical. It's the kind of
cold Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in The Long Winter, the sort you
read about as a child but never imagine living through: -25F
(-31C) in Fargo, North Dakota; -31F (-35C) in International
Falls, Minnesota; -21F (-29.5C) in Duluth, Minnesota. Wind chill
– what the cold feels like, when you combine the actual
temperature with other atmospheric information – is reaching up
to -70F (56.7C) in the worst places. And in Canada, they're
experiencing something called frostquakes,
which is what happens when nature throws everything at you and
then decides to invent something even more terrifying.

It's really, really, really cold.

Wherever possible, smart people across the American mid-west are
hunkering down indoors. Those on the east coast are preparing for
the arctic blast to hit on Tuesday. Schools are closed, offices
have encouraged employees to work from home and from Duluth to
Cincinnati, the message is clear: stay inside.

OK, but there's only so much Netflix you can watch, and maybe
your copy of Wilder got lost in a move. That's where science and
the internet come in, to keep us all entertained while we wait
for spring.

Have you tried any of these experiments yourself? Let's
talk in the comments.

Frozen bubbles

Last month, photographer Angela Kelly took a solution of soapy
water out into the cold in Washington state, to make an amazing series of frozen-bubble photos. They
have been widely shared these last few days. The science is
pretty simple: the water freezes in the bitter air but the soapy
solution allows it to retain it bubble form. As soon as you touch
them, though, the heat from your fingers will melt the bubble.
The largest of them make for photos like Kelly's, while the
smallest ones can roll around on the ground like tiny marbles.

Boiling water + freezing air

When very hot water reaches very cold air, the water vaporizes,
and some of it turns into small chunks of ice. Snow, basically.
This can lead to camera-friendly visuals, like the one shown
below by Wisconsin-based meteorologist Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus). The temperature at his house is
-21F (-29.4C) with a wind chill of -51F (-46.1C), Holthaus says,
and while I can't endorse his decision not to wear a hat
outdoors, the video is still pretty cool:

For added fun, use a water gun:

Freezing things

The hottest trend among local news stations involves sending
whichever reporter is least liked around the office out into the
cold with a wet shirt, to time how long it takes for it to freeze
solid.